Dementia slips down pharma agenda

Pfizer has announced it is taking a step back from the notoriously risky area of neuroscience with plans to halt the development of treatments for Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s diseases. The ‘refocussing’ will see the loss of 300 jobs from the company’s neuroscience discovery and early development programs at its US bases in Andover and Cambridge, Massachusetts, and Groton, Connecticut, while the money currently being spent on this area will be reallocated elsewhere. What will happen to the handful of candidates already undergoing clinical trials is unclear.